Sweden's Centrist Government Dream Collapses - Ball Back to Kristersson?

Sweden's centrist dream government is dead. Centre Party leader Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist walked out of a meeting with the Speaker of the Riksdag on Monday morning and handed back her mandate to explore a new government. No result.

She had spent a week sounding out a broad cross-bloc coalition: the Social Democrats, the Greens, the Centre Party, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats, or a version that also pulled in the Moderates.

That majority does not exist in parliament, a late Thand Ringqvist admitted when she finally faced the press.

"Today there is a majority for centrist policies but no majority for a centrist government," she said, according to Swedish public radio. Asked straight out whether the idea could now be buried, she said yes. "Right now we can bury it."

Blaming others

Both Liberal leader Simona Mohamsson and Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch had shot down the plan in advance. They still back Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson for prime minister and refuse to let Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson take power.

Thand Ringqvist met all eight party leaders during the week, including Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson and Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar. But the Centre Party still won't budge on its so-called red lines against working with either of them. Instead she put the blame on everyone else.

"The Centre Party has done a number of things to try to find a way through this deadlock. Now other parties have to do the same," she said.

She also took a swipe at the Left and the Greens for sinking the Social Democrats' first attempt to form a government. "We were ready to let a Social Democrat single-party government through, but V and MP blocked it," she said, adding that there is no majority for a turn to the left in Swedish politics.

Budget fiasco

The collapse deepens the crisis on the red-green side more than six weeks after the September 13 election. The four left-leaning parties hold 176 seats against 173 for the Tidö parties, the right-wing bloc behind Kristersson's government with Sweden Democrat support. Yet they have agreed on neither a government nor a policy.

On October 15 the Riksdag voted on Magdalena Andersson as prime minister of a pure Social Democrat government. She went down hard, 248 against and only 99 for. Her own intended partners, the Left, the Greens and the Centre Party, all voted no.

On Sunday evening came the next blow. Social Democrat economic spokesman Mikael Damberg admitted on SVT's Agenda that the four red-green parties cannot even put together a joint state budget before the November 12 deadline. "It's almost impossible," he said.

Kristersson next?

That means Ulf Kristersson's caretaker government will table a temporary budget instead. With both Andersson and Thand Ringqvist out, the ball is back with Speaker Andreas Norlén, and Damberg himself opened the door to Norlén now turning to the right and to Kristersson.

"Let's see what the Speaker's next step is," Damberg said.